Mexican authorities arrest man in border agent's death

Published 6:00 pm, Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Associated Press Writer

Mexican authorities said Wednesday they have arrested a man for the weekend killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent who was run over by a suspected smuggler's vehicle.

Agent Luis Aguilar, 32, was placing spike strips in the path of two vehicles believed to have illegally entered the United States from Mexico when one of the vehicles struck and killed him on Saturday, according to Border Patrol authorities in Arizona.

Mexican federal and state police arrested Jesus Navarro Montes on Tuesday in the northern state of Sonora for the killing, according to a joint statement distributed Wednesday by Mexico's federal Attorney General's office and Public Safety Department.

Authorities believe Navarro left Mexicali in Baja California and was headed for the U.S. in a Hummer carrying drugs on Saturday, the statement said.

After the killing, Navarro, 22, drove to Mexicali and gave the Hummer to accomplices for safekeeping, according to an Attorney General's office spokesman who could not be named according to departmental rules.

The official said Navarro acknowledged hitting the agent and has been taken to Mexicali.

Navarro had previously been detained and jailed for smuggling 10 undocumented migrants into the U.S., and there was a warrant for his arrest in Mexicali for human trafficking, the statement said.

Later Wednesday, the Baja California section of the Attorney General's office said it found materials for manufacturing U.S. immigration documents after searching three Mexicali homes based on information from Navarro's arrest. Prosecutors seized blank immigration documents, stamps with the U.S. government's seal, border-crossing cards and temporary visas.

Border Patrol officials in Yuma, Ariz., declined to comment on Wednesday, referring calls to the FBI in San Diego which is leading the investigation on the U.S. side of the border. An FBI spokeswoman did not respond immediately to an e-mail request for comment.

But spokesman Michael Bernacke of the Border Control's Yuma sector said previously that Aguilar was hit while trying to stop a suspected smuggler in the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area about 20 miles west of Yuma.

The Imperial Sand Dunes are the largest dunes in California, extending north of the border for 40 miles and averaging five miles wide. The area is popular with off-road vehicle enthusiasts but also is frequently used by smugglers trying to bring people or drugs into the country.

Aguilar was originally from El Paso, Texas.

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Associated Press writers Arthur H. Rotstein in Tucson, Arizona, and Jessica Bernstein-Wax in Mexico City contributed to this report.